POPE VISITS SECULAR SENSE ON RELIGIONS’ FIGHTING FACTIONS

The Herald
May 13 2009
UK

So, cast your mind back. The President of the American Republic is
paying a courtesy call on the Republic of Turkey. The new man in the
West Wing has a strategic interest and a small problem.

While campaigning for office, Barack Obama has promised a minority
ethnic group that he will hold Attaturk’s Ottoman forebears to account
for genocide.

It’s a big word, that one. Perhaps the biggest: the deliberate murder
of an entire people. Nothing trivial.

advertisementIn the case of Armenians ("Who remembers them?" inquired a
Herr Hitler, once upon a time), it is 1.5 million slaughtered sisters
and children. You can see why they might grumble.

Or perhaps you can see why those who have descended from the victims
might wish, anxiously, for Mr President to make a point.

But he didn’t. Bits of hell thereafter broke loose. Turkey’s
nationalists were unhappy with an implied slight to their national
dignity. Professional Armenians quibbled over words unsaid. And only
a few people who know a few bits of the western part of an ancient
language thought twice.

Obama said: "Medz yeghern." It loosely goes: "Great catastrophe." And
no-one, Turk or Hai, was happy with that.

I asked my wife. She did not say – for she would not say, not with
1.5 million souls in her story – that Obama was wrong. She does not
pretend to speak for all. She just wants things to end. Halt: please.

Turks, Armenians, the Arabs or the Jews: this one, that one I don’t
have much time, generally, for bishops of Rome. The latest least.

Having insulted just about everyone for the sin of being non-Catholic,
the German Papa had some PR work to do. But – and you saw this one
coming – by Christ, it’s not a bad effort.

If I understand the man who lately ran the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith (an Inquisition, for the stupid) correctly,
we all need to get over all our horrors. Can we manage such a thing?

So Benedict tours the Middle East to make a gesture. It was something
he had to do. It was quite a gesture, though. And it wasn’t a bad try.

Because I lack all faith, I wonder sometimes about the People of the
Book. Is there a passage I missed that says you must always kill one
another, until the end of time?

Pope Benedict says his ignorant stuff about Islam and Judaism,
recriminations follow, the press in Israel then objects that
insufficient attention has been paid to Shoah.

I say: but you killed Palestinian children. Answer to that. Letters
follow.

But I return, I think, I hope, to what the old Vatican careerist was
attempting to express this week: can we all just stop? If you don’t
kill me, I promise not to kill you. Palestinian Arabs are entitled
to justice; but so are the children – especially the little ones –
of Israel. There is no need for this.

Anyhow. Most people don’t know where Armenia is on any map. Hardly
anyone knows where Van used to be. It was a town, a very long time ago,
with families, children, holidays, happiness and the usual lives.

Then it got eradicated. Even if I were to ask the government of the
honoured republic of Turkey tomorrow morning, I would not be allowed
a pass to walk among those ruins: medz yeghern.

Their embassy can tell me otherwise, of course.

So, strangely, I find myself supporting a German bishop of Rome whose
history I could pick apart. But I won’t.

Of all the personages I least expected, there’s this: a man who enters,
like a Daniel, and says that we have all done – and said – vile things,
terrible things, Nazi things.

Muslim, Jew, Crusader: the Israeli press may hold a view; I differ. I
simply repeat myself: someone’s Pope has been brave.

But I almost forgot. Someone should speak on behalf of the dead. I
think that Benedict was making the attempt. But it also seems to me
that he was making an attempt to speak on the part of the living, too.

That’s clever, if you’re a priest.

Why do the Armenians matter? Because they’re dead. All of them. Strays
turn up, now and then, but each is lonely in her soul.

Why do Jews matter? Because they survive.

Why do Muslims matter? Because they also survive.

And a Pope? When he speaks the truth. It’s not my book, but I
believe, en passant, that it says: Thou Shalt Not It appears to
me that the least likely of Popes has just done something amazing
and that a world, a media world, otherwise bedevilled with mundane,
ancient corruption in a local legislature has been busy missing the
point. Just a thought, mind.

Benedict has said, I think, that the major faiths had best get
themselves sorted or chaos, real and actual, will descend. He has
attempted to bring those of the singular (triune, if you like)
God together. I suspect that all the other priests understand. To
my editors I said: a gesture. I begin to wonder, though, if "coup"
is not the superior word.

Who killed the Armenians? Better question: why? How could a Jew have
become involved in the Shabra massacre, and why would a decent,
dignified, educated German have stood at the gates of the Warsaw
ghetto?

Quote me: the godly are organising. The visit of His Holiness to
that Holy Land was a remarkable gesture, but I get the impression of
negotiation. The People of the Book are annoyed, I think, by all this
secular stuff. The man from Rome takes a risky trip to say, in person,
that Catholics, Jews and Muslims have more in common than any of us
might have in mind.

I say advisedly: we’ll see.

As your basic, ignorant, lumpen atheist, I say: what do I care? But
I also say: who slaughtered the Armenians then, or the Jews, or the
Palestinians? Who keeps it up, for God’s sake?

The Pope can have my number, any time. Or visit.